Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years (39 page)

“Maunts go through cigars like termites through doorsils. We have none to spare.”

“Thought you might say that.”

Beneath the saddlebags, Sister Doctor had piled four or five pelts and two woolen blankets. The rain had faltered again, but the shadows blued up in a frosty way. Lir was about to renew the request for indoor lodging, but Sister Doctor anticipated his request.

“You can’t be alowed to stay, I’m afraid,” she told them. “I was distracted by seeing Sister Apothecaire—Little Daffy as she styles herself now. I didn’t realy take in the measure of the difficulty until I realized you had Lir with you. It’s too dangerous for you to come into the house. No one must know you are here.”

“You have stool pigeons among the maunts?” asked the Lion. “So much for your professed neutrality.”

“I’m protecting my sisters as much as I’m trying to protect you. We’ve been visited three times in the past two years by emissaries from the EC military to check and see who’s been through. I can’t vouch that every voice among our sorority is equaly devoted to neutrality—how could I? How could I plead knowledge into al of their souls? Nor can I attest that they’d stand up to harsh questioning if the investigators sniffed out that we were hiding something. Better for al that you should move on.”

“What are they looking for?” asked Lir, and “When were they last here?” asked his half-sister, at the same time.

“You’ve eluded them for so long that some believe you are dead,” said Sister Doctor to Lir. “But they don’t believe you brought the Grimmerie into the Afterlife with you. So they’re convinced they’l find it sooner or later. You may have heard that the invasion of Munchkinland is staled. General Cherrystone’s army has taken Restwater, but the struggle around Haugaard’s Keep is a standoff. The Munchkinlanders can’t reclaim the lake; nor can the EC forces advance as far as Colwen Grounds to finish their reannexation of Munchkinland. The Munchkinland farms won’t sel bread or grain to Loyal Oz until the invading forces yield Restwater and retreat.”

“Never yield,” hissed Little Daffy, almost to herself.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Sister Apothecaire, Munchkinland won’t starve. But with no one to sel bread to, much of their unharvested grain just rots in the fields. The EC meanwhile hankers for bread but has plenty of water to drink. The term on a game board is caled stalemate, I think.”

“How does this figure in surveilance of maunts?” asked the Lion.

“Isn’t it plain as the nose on your plain face? The EC once again ramps up its campaign to find the Grimmerie. In the hopes that it might reveal secrets of how to unleash a mightier force against central Munchkinland, and strike a blow at the heart of the government at Colwen Grounds. Finishing the job.

“In short,” she said, “if you lot thought you were out of danger, you’re sadly mistaken. Whoever travels with Lir Thropp courts danger, by association.”

“And you’ve given us broccoli, bread, and wine,” said Little Daffy. “Sister, thank you.”

“I maintain my vows.” She passed the strawberry compote for spooning upon the more burnt bits of caramel cake.

They told her what they’d heard about the legendary Dorothy making a comeback tour. Sister Doctor hadn’t been apprised of this, but she wasn’t much interested. “We haven’t had a reprisal of the Great Drought for some time now, but if it should come as soon as next summer, punishing the fields with blight, the Munchkinlanders have little left in their coffers to buy supplies from Loyal Oz, and trading agreements are suspended anyway. The uneasy balance settled upon now seems more or less peaceful—only a few soldiers die a week on one side or the other, in this skirmish or that—but one doesn’t know who wil give out first, Loyal Oz or Munchkinland.”

“You’ve become calous,” remarked Little Daffy. “‘Only a few soldiers die a week?’ Time was you and I would go out on the battlefield and tend to the sick, and care about it.”

“Don’t hector me. I care as much as I can, but I don’t spend energy caring about things I cannot resolve. I tend to my maunts and keep us out of harm’s way. Right now I’m feeding the hungry and harboring enemies of the state. I can’t do al that and work in international diplomacy too. Pass me the butter pot.”

The Lion said, “Look, we have a little girl here. Surely she deserves a roof over her head for one night? We’ve been on the road a week or more.”

“Don’t think I haven’t guessed who she is,” said Sister Doctor. “I’m trying to protect you al. Have you no sense? Or do you realy not believe me?” She sighed, and then slipped off the starched yoke of her religious garb, and without evidence of humility or shame she let the bib of her garment slip down almost to her nipple. The scar on her shoulder was rippled, a plum color, like congealed tadmuck. Glossy and hideous. “Do you remember how Mother Yackle went blind? These men don’t come to play parlor games. I am trying in as calm a voice as I can to tel you that you’re in danger at Apple Press Farm. They know from that felow Trism that you were here once, Lir and Candle, and they suspect this wil be one of the places you might return. They’ve turned the house inside out three times thinking they might yet find the Grimmerie on the premises. We’ve had to put it to rights as best we could, over and over again. Thank the Unnamed God for Sister Sawblade, that’s what I say.” She dressed herself again and concluded her sermon. “Even the house might be bugged. Do you know what I mean? We have a weird infestation of woggle-bugs. I’m told there is some thought they can be communicated with—don’t ask me how. My capacity for comprehending mystery doesn’t extend to science, only to faith. But I can’t be sure they aren’t capable somehow of alerting the next contingent of investigators that you were in residence, were I to make a mistake of mercy and let you in. You see,” she finished, “you can’t stay. For our sake, but also for your own good. Tonight, al right, to the barn, but
quietly
. For the sake of a croupy child. After dark. I’l take Sister Manure off muckout detail. But tomorrow you’l be on your way. No one wil be the wiser, no one but me and the donkey. And I can stand anything.”

“She can,” said Little Daffy miserably, when she had gone. “I don’t like the old bitch anymore, but she’s a tough little biscuit, and she means what she says. Anyone else in Oz would crack under torture before she did.”

I0.

Before dawn. At the sound of maunts beginning their devotional song, Sister Doctor nipped in with a cornucopia of supplies the travelers could use during the next stage of their journey. She refused to advise them which way to go or what to do. “I don’t want to know if you have the Grimmerie with you,” she told them. “However, I do believe it’s time to lose the Clock. You’d move faster without it, and what good is it doing you now?”

Lir pondered the question as they slipped away, unheeded, from Apple Press Farm. Here he had learned to love a woman—to love this wife, this mother of their child—and even more, he had learned to love at al. He had felt a pang at coming near, had been afraid, however stiff his face and controled his upper lip, that he would mourn for the lost simpleton he’d once been. He needn’t have worried. Leaving Apple Press Farm, his mind returned to the present and the future as they headed north into drier air.

Iskinaary had kept silent while on the farm. Lir remembered only after they’d left it that the Goose, too, had been there before. Faling into step with the Bird, Lir asked him what he had concluded about the maunt’s revelations.

“I could have finished off an entire generation of woggle-bugs in an afternoon’s work,” said the Goose. “I should have thought that might be apparent, but did anyone ask me for help? Noooooo. Just a sily Goose, old Iskinaary.”

“You can be some help now, and take to the wing,” said Lir. “Do a little scouting for us. Sister Doctor’s caution seemed wel founded. Some pots can take years to come to the boil, but when they do, the scalding is ferocious.”

“I’l do that,” said the Goose. “For you. For you and Candle. Oh, and for the girl too, I suppose. By extension. Though I wish she would show a little more oomph. I don’t mean to be cruel, but she’s a bit slow out of the eggshel, isn’t she?”

“I’d go do that surveilance right now before you get an additional thrust to your liftoff by a boot in the behind,” said Lir, and Iskinaary obliged.

And then Lir thought: How are we ever going to protect her?

They walked single file. The farther from Apple Press Farm, the farther apart from one another they straggled. Even Tay kept a little distance from Rain. It was as if they had al taken in the message that there would be no safe harbor for them, not while the world was at war—so, presumably, not ever.

Lir tried to remember being Rain’s age—eight, nine, ten. Whatever it was. He had been in Kiamo Ko at that age, playing with Nor, surely? Or had Nor already been taken away by Cherrystone and his men? In any case, he’d been alone in his life, as alone as Rain seemed to be. He’d lived with his mother, with the Wicked Witch of the West (which might be the name of any mother, al mothers, he realized), but he’d lived apart, not unlike the way Rain kept apart from him and Candle. Of course Elphaba had shown little interest in him. Or if she had shown some kind of interest, he’d been too dul to read it as such—the way, presumably, Rain was too dul to recognize Lir’s love, even passion, for her.

What a mystery we are to ourselves, even as we go on, learning more, sorting it out a little.

The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life, and the older you get—the more specificity you harvest—the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm.

Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. Rather the opposite, maybe. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).

Would he ever know anything about Rain? Or would he have to accept that he would live in a world adjacent to hers, with her tantalizingly nearby, but a mystery always, growing into her own inviolable individuality?

Maybe it had been better, he caught himself thinking, if he
had
kept her close to his side, for even if she’d been ripped from his arms at the age of six, she would have known six good years of close fatherly affection—

No, he couldn’t think that; he couldn’t bear to. Even in an alternate history. He couldn’t tolerate the thought of her being taken from him. Even though he’d given her away.

There she loped, scuffing up snow, head down between her shoulders. He could walk the rest of his life. He would never catch up to her.

Iskinaary returned. “She was more right than she knew, that old crow,” he told Lir. “Menaciers four miles along, and on the very path we’re trudging. We’l have to turn off. There’s a paralel track a mile to the west that looks less traveled; we should divert across country to it at once.”

They began to turn the Clock.

“We’re adjusting further and further off our goal,” complained Mr. Boss, but Brrr was hauling the cart, not him. And the Lion never minded veering off any track that led straight into the sights of marksmen.

“Later we’l compensate and arc back eastward. If we continue to believe we should try to steal across the border into Munchkinland and be present to defend Dorothy,” said Brrr. “Though perhaps she won’t need our help. She seems to come equipped with al kinds of fatal architecture attached to her. First a farmhouse, and now this giant wrought-iron birdcage or whatever it is she was trapped in. The girl does wreak havoc on the physical universe. Why is that?”

“Shhh,” said Lir. “The soldiers may have fanned out since Iskinaary saw them half an hour ago.”

“I doubt they have,” said the Goose. “They were playing cards. Five Hand Slut, if I could read the markings, though I don’t have the eye of an eagle. They didn’t look in any particular hurry, but I’l go take another gander. If you hear a gunshot and a strangulated cry for ‘peace among al nations! peace in our time,’ find my corpse and turn me into a Goose-feather bolster, and use me to suffocate one of our foes.” He looked proud at the thought. “We have so many.”

Lir said, “Are you going to continue to plan your own memorial service or are you going to go on a reconnaissance mission for us?”

“That Dosey has made you al military again. If I were a different sort of Goose I’d find it kind of sexy,” said Iskinaary, and took off.

For the next ten days or so Iskinaary became their early warning system. Not until he came back from his rounds and sounded the al clear would they advance another three or four miles.

Lir hauled the Grimmerie on his back. When he tried to put it in a drawer in the Clock, or on a shelf, the drawer wouldn’t open or the shelf broke. The shutters wouldn’t latch, due to new sweling in the jambs. Even in its paralysis the Clock managed to have an opinion. The Clock didn’t want the Grimmerie anymore.

A winning tribe of pygmy warthogs came through one day, snuffling around the wheels of the conveyance and peeing al over the place. Tay hissed and leapt upon the dragon’s dead snout, and the Lion went upright even in his shafts, spooked. The wagon rocked and tilted and looked about to smash to one side til Nor whipped off her shawl. She gave the warthogs a cotton lashing at which they merely laughed before continuing to rootle on through the undergrowth.

Another afternoon, the companions surprised a bear doing something downright pornographic with a beeless hive of honey. Brrr almost said “Cubbins?” in case it was his old friend—but a Gilikin Bear wouldn’t have wandered this far south, and since this bear showed no capacity for shame he couldn’t be a talking Bear.

Nor took off her shawl again and wrapped it around Rain’s head, making a blinder for her eyes so she wouldn’t too closely examine the inappropriate.

“Realy, that’s disgusting,” said Little Daffy.
“Wildlife
.”

“Disgusting? Inventive.” Mr. Boss had perked up for the first time in weeks, and he nudged his wife. “Maybe if we ever get to a trading post we can invest in a pot of honey, honey, and have a honeymoon.” The Goose had become a bard of advice. “Good spot to camp,” he would report, or “Long slope ahead; we’l have to take it slow.” Or “Rainclouds on the horizon; better stop the afternoon here where the fir branches wil give us cover.” Or even “Skarks passing behind us, let’s pick up the speed in case they decide they want Lion steaks for supper.” Day after day. The winter waned, but reluctantly, with glacial speed. Finaly, the beginning of woodland blossom, those brave early ground-level markers like filarettes and snowdrops.